Mick Hume
Times Online
April 8, 2008
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Charlton Heston’s obituarists worry that his acting career might be “overshadowed” by his controversial stance against gun control. Let’s hope so. Most of Heston’s movie roles were as stiff as his chiselled jaw. But his rock-like defence of the right to bear arms was worthy of an award.
I say this not as a right-wing Republican, but as a Brit of the Left. Hollywood liberals demonised the man who was Moses for his pro-gun views. But that only shows how illiberal they have become. Anybody who retains enough liberal spirit to believe in individual freedom as the basis for a civilised society ought to have stood at Heston’s right hand on this issue.
Yesterday’s headlines charting Heston’s decline “from civil rights supporter to gun lover” missed the target. He switched from supporting John F. Kennedy in the Sixties to backing Richard Nixon in the Seventies and Ronald Reagan in the Eighties. But defending the right of Americans to bear arms was consistent with his earlier defence of black civil rights.
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